1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to information systems and more specifically to digital information content and methods of selecting an entry therefrom.
2. Art Background
Filing systems are in widespread use for both physical records and records that exist in the form of digital information content. Filing systems can occur without design or conscious thought simply by placing items together in a group. Groupings of this type commonly occur with record albums, audiotapes, compact disks, digital pictures, etc. FIG. 1 illustrates a stack of music compact disks (CDs) 100 that form a filing system. The CDs may be physically handled by a user, e.g., they may be picked up, read, examined, etc. However, entries within a digital file cannot be readily examined as the physical CDs can be.
A descriptive line of text typically represents each entry in a digital file. A user of the file system is faced with the task of reading individual lines of text that correspond with the particular entry in the file system. This is a tedious process that is often found to be unenjoyable. To simplify the task, search engines have been created to reduce the time needed to search large file systems. Alternatively, the group of lines of text representing the entries in the digital file may be indexed so that a logical order is established to help the user find an entry in a reduced amount of time.
Various attempts have been made to make entries in a digital file more accessible to the user. The icons on a computer system desktop that represent physical storage devices or locations within a storage device is one example. Another example is the thumbnail that represents a digital image or video file. These attempts are limited by the finite size of the window or information display that the thumbnail is displayed on. The number of entries in a digital file system is often large, with the total number of entries numbering into the thousands. It is not practical to display the contents of large file systems with the aforementioned techniques.
The user must rely on his or her memory to recall terms with which to query the search engine and/or scan through a list of text descriptors based on the results of the query. The combination of, listings of entries within a database, associated index, search engine, and selection mechanism is referred to in the art as a “user interface.” FIG. 2 shows a present user interface for selecting and playing a digital music file, known in the art by one standard as an “MP3” file, according to the presently available user interface methods described previously. With reference to FIG. 2, a view within a window on an information display is shown at 200. An address to a location on a data storage device is shown at 202. For this example, 202 corresponds to a location given by “genres.mp3.com/music/pop_rock.” Many entries are shown in 200. One entry at 204 is given by the text line “‘Near The Son’ by Throckmorton.” This entry and others must be read by the user in order to make a selection. Controls for play at 206 must be selected as desired to play selection 204. Within the view provided by window 200 a limited number of entries are displayed according to the present format of display within the user interface. The user must scroll the view area of the window using scroll buttons at 208 and 210 to modify the field of view.
Another disadvantage to the presently available user interface, such as the one described in conjunction with FIG. 2, is that the interface is often times not intuitive enough for users of all ages and experience level with data processing systems to use. This problem limits the number of users who may be willing to use digital media storage devices.
A shortcoming that is common to all of the present filing systems/directories/indices previously described is that using these methods within a user interface does not present an entertaining experience to the user. The presently available user interfaces are tedious and time consuming to use. A parallel problem is that the contents of the filing system are not readily viewed by the user due to the attendant tedium experienced when access to the contents of the filing system is undertaken. A user who owns a collection of digital media content cannot readily show the content to another person due to the aforementioned limitations.
What is needed is a way of making the digital information content accessible to the user with a minimum of required user interaction.